Author: griffey

This is _brilliant_. So many possibilities, esp since we know that voice assistants can be controlled via subsonics and other audio trickery. Middle-manning them in this way is an amazing technical feat, but will be easier and easier over time.

Alias is a teachable “parasite” that is designed to give users more control over their smart assistants, both when it comes to customisation and privacy. Through a simple app the user can train Alias to react on a custom wake-word/sound, and once trained, Alias can take control over your home assistant by activating it for you.

…with hundreds of these scooters abandoned and rotting in impound lots, likely never to be recovered, maybe now is a good time to invest in a $30 scooter “conversion kit”, which ships direct from China, and plugs-and-plays to convert one of these scooters to a “personal scooter,” with all recovery and payment components permanently disabled.

After years of hype, the Magic Leap One is finally available for purchase…at least, for those developers lucky enough to live in certain parts of the US. They are limiting purchasing for now to certain geographic areas (you have to enter your ZIP to see if you are in a lucky area). The headsets start at $2295, so they aren’t cheap, but given the promise of AR and the hype behind Magic Leap, I think they are worth looking at for libraries that are getting into AR.

Check their “experiences” page to get a better idea of the sort of craziness that is coming with AR.

About three years ago I was talking with a Very Large Library about their desire to put in a video wall as an art piece, and given the shape and size of the space I tried very hard to talk them into projection mapping instead. They didn’t get it, but this might make it easy enough for libraries to use as a display option for some spaces….if i were running a library, I’d want one of these to play with as far as displays and signage.

Google researchers have developed a deep-learning system designed to help computers better identify and isolate individual voices within a noisy environment. As noted in a post on the company’s Google Research Blog this week, a team within the tech giant attempted to replicate the cocktail party effect, or the human brain’s ability to focus on one source of audio while filtering out others—just as you would while talking to a friend at a party.

Engineers have previously investigated the possibility of having a camera sensor power itself with the same light that falls on it. After all, it’s basically just two different functions of a photovoltaic cell — one stores the energy that falls on it while the other records how much energy fell on it.

I will say, this is maybe 2 years earlier than I thought this would happen. But no doubt that it would, or that eventually this will be commonplace (except of course for Designer Brands that sell privacy as a service).

In a test due to begin this year, L.L. Bean plans to ship a line of coats and boots with sewn-in sensors that send data to the public Ethereum blockchain platform. The retailer is building a data tracking and analytics system to use customer data stored on Ethereum. Loomia, a Brooklyn-based technology company, plans to provide sheets of flexible circuitry to embed in the apparel, along with a small hardware device that uses near-field communication signals to collect data from the circuits while the custome